They Built a City
On Top of
the Dead.

In 1760 workers in Savannah dug through an artificial hill between the city and the Trustees' Garden on the bay. What they found stopped them.

The History of the City Government of Savannah, page 34, records what happened: a stratum was opened near the plane of the city filled with human bones. The document states plainly that this confirmed the history of the mount as an ancient Indian burying ground.

The Yamacraw people had lived on this bluff above the Savannah River before James Oglethorpe arrived in 1733. Chief Tomochichi granted Oglethorpe permission to establish his colony here. The Yamacraw burial ground was already ancient when the English arrived. It was still there — underneath the hill, underneath the city — when workers dug through it twenty-seven years later.

The bones were found. The document recorded them. The city kept building. The Yamacraw burial ground has no marker in downtown Savannah. The hill is gone. This primary source document was found during research for DEED History in April 2026.